LivingSocial, headquartered in Washington, DC, is the second largest group buying website in the United States after Groupon.
Livingsocial Development History:
In 2007, four good friends, Aaron Batalion, Tim O'Shaughnessy, Eddie Frederick and Val Aleksenko, founded a technology consulting company called Hungry Machine. The first thing they did was to develop apps specifically to hook into Facebook, such as voting apps.
Later, "Hunger Machine" became a company that pushed business sales information emails to customers.
In 2009, "Hunger Machine" was renamed LivingSocial.
Livingsocial's business model:
1) Livingsocial launches a group buying deal every weekday in each of its service cities, with group-purchased goods or services at a discount of at least 50%.
Stores participating in group buying activities do not need to pay any upfront fees, and Livingsocial charges a commission of approximately 30% of the revenue. Similar to many group buying models, users can only activate and use group buying coupons after the group buying transaction is completed.
2) Users can log on to the Livingsocial website or obtain group purchase information via email. After a successful purchase, they will receive a redemption voucher via email around 10 am the next day.
They can choose to print the redemption voucher for consumption, or download the redemption voucher to Google Android phones or Apple iPhone, iPad, iTouch and other devices. While Livingsocial is making a fortune from the group buying business, it has not forgotten its role as an application developer. Excellent multi-platform applications also provide strong support for group buying business.
3) Livingsocial does not set a minimum number of group purchase participants.
Users don’t have to worry about losing out on discounts because the number of group buyers is too small. In addition, in order to encourage more users to participate in group buying, Livingsocial also launched a new "promotion in exchange for free" model at the time. After a user purchases a group purchase, he or she can send the group purchase link to his or her friends. If he or she attracts three other friends to purchase as well, the promoting user can enjoy a free transaction.
After successfully promoting group buying in the catering industry, the young people at Livingsocial began to become restless again. They are constantly trying new services, such as museums, SPA massages and even indoor skydiving. Livingsocial's group buying projects are becoming more and more unique.
Maybe they are all young people and have the ambition to play. The successful O'Shaughnessy even rides a SEGWAY electric scooter to work every day. Livingsocial has keenly discovered the urban young people's demand for relaxing and stimulating vacations. After launching several weekend adventure group purchases to test market demand, in October 2010, Livingsocial acquired Urban Escapes, a New York outdoor adventure vacation company, and launched tailor-made leisure vacation services for young people in major American cities.
This is the end of the knowledge about Livingsocial in this issue. If you want to get more information about Livingsocial, please pay attention and we will continue to answer your questions~
